Steve Sinton, a rancher, was baffled when a company he’d never heard of began buying large tracts of agricultural land near his pastures at above-market prices. The firm, Brodiaea Inc., over a few months in 2012 acquired more than three square miles of a flat-bottomed valley.
“It was surprising, the prices they were willing to pay,” says Mr. Sinton, a partner in a family-owned ranch that raises cattle and grows grapes. A conventional agricultural business’s returns couldn’t have justified those prices. “It didn’t make sense to me.”
Brodiaea’s drilling permits and property purchases were signed by Matt Turrentine, a local who had recently left his family’s grape-brokerage business. He wouldn’t say who was behind the investment, Mr. Sinton and other locals say. The firm bought more acreage, drilled deep-water wells and began planting vineyards capable of producing billions of grapes annually.
One thing was clear. Brodiaea was willing to pay a premium for land that had good access to groundwater, an increasingly valuable resource given that aquifer levels elsewhere in San Luis Obispo County had fallen steeply.